X-ray artist's amazing images reveal hidden beauty

Apparently Superman isn't the only one with X-ray vision.
During his nearly two-decade career, British photographer Nick Veasey
has been using his own superpowers to peer inside everything from
insects to MP3 players to jumbo jets--and create stunning images of
their innards.
And like any accomplished superhero (or artist), Veasey makes it look easy.
To view one of his X-ray photos is to think the trick was simply in
choosing the proper-size machine for the job and rather lazily pushing
the button. In this scenario, the insect and the MP3 player were
no-brainers. As for the passenger plane, the difficulty was just in
locating an X-ray machine big enough to use on the thing (or, a more
imaginative viewer might think, to shrink the plane--complete with a
crew member or two--down enough to fit into a doctor's office).
To some extent the assumption about finding the right machine is
correct. For an arresting X-ray of a bus (and its newspaper-reading
passengers), Veasey employed the sort of cargo-scanning X-ray machine
that's used at border crossings. The device examines vehicles for hidden
bombs, drugs, or stowaways--one slice at a time, like a CT scanner.
But that was only the beginning. It got Veasey the bus, or a crude outline of it, but it provided little else.

For one thing, Veasey can't X-ray actual human beings (at least not
living ones). To get the detail he needs for a compelling image, he has
to zap his subjects with radiation for minutes at a time--and with a
typical medical X-ray lasting for a couple tenths of a second, he says,
his approach would be anything but safe for a person.
So instead, he uses skeletons once employed by
radiologists-in-training. Or more precisely, he uses a skeleton. Her
name is Frida, and she and Veasey have been working together for some
time. It's Frida who appears again and again in the bus. She sits; she
stands. She reads the paper; she drives the vehicle.
And this tips Veasey's hand: His images are, in fact, not one-off
X-rays at all (at least not when it comes to the more complex examples).
They're skillful and laboriously constructed collages, made up, in some
cases, of hundreds of separate X-rays, costing hundreds of dollars
apiece.

(Credit:
Nick Veasey)

This involves more than just the need to avoid irradiating
unsuspecting human models. The example of the cargo-scanning X-ray
machine used for the bus is somewhat misleading. For the jumbo jet,
Veasey still used the right machine, but it was nothing a plane would
fit into--unless, of course, you fit it in one chunk at a time.
And this is what Veasey often does. Like engineers who X-ray airplane
parts to ensure they won't malfunction, Veasey X-rays separate
components; and then he puts them all together in Photoshop. This not
only lets him capture objects as gigantic as a Boeing 777 (which, of
course, dwarfs a mere bus), it also lets him create richly detailed and
layered images that would be impossible to produce with a single X-ray.
Take the image of the Mini Cooper automobile Veasey turned out: A
ghostly door is visible--along with the window-cranking mechanism inside
it; the driver's seat and its suspension system; and the steering
column, stick shift, and other mechanical tidbits further back in the
cab--all in exquisite detail. Rendering that with a single X-ray
wouldn't have worked--Veasey shot the door, the seat, and so on
individually, to show each part at its best.
As you might guess, this takes awhile. Veasey and his assistants
spent three months creating the image of the 777, in the process
X-raying something in the neighborhood of 500 different parts. And even
the simpler "X-rays" take time. An image of a plant might be
painstakingly manipulated to simultaneously bring out the character of
each different aspect of the object--the fullness of the stem, for
example, and the delicacy of a leaf.
Where does Veasey find the patience, and the stamina, to do all this?
One presumes clients such as Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Mecedes-Benz, and
United Airlines pay handsomely to feature his work in their ad
campaigns. And then there are the awards (he's won a bunch) and the art
collectors (Veasey exhibits his work internationally). But it's more
than that. Veasey is struck--as you may well be--by the hidden beauty in
things, be they jumbo jets, Mini Coopers, or even everyday cast-offs
like plastic toys or bowler hats. And with all his experience, he still
finds himself amazed.
"It's revealing the hidden beauty within," Veasey said of his unique calling in an interview with the BBC.
"And sometimes you're surprised. You can walk down the aisle in the
supermarket--and the most common and everyday things look beautiful when
they're X-rayed. Equally, other things you pick up that you think will
make a fantastic shot sometimes disappoint you. I've been doing it
for...years, and I'm surprised every time I shoot."
Take a look at our gallery of Veasey's work, and see if you're not surprised too.